What to do after registering your UK limited company: a 30-day checklist

When I registered my first limited company, I came out of Companies House with a shiny certificate and absolutely no idea what to do next. The information online was piecemeal, sometimes contradictory, and rarely in the right order. After enough friends and contacts asked me the same questions, I built FasScale so that new founders wouldn't have to piece it together the hard way.

This is the checklist I wish someone had given me on day one. It covers the first 30 days after your company is incorporated: what's urgent, what's important, and what can wait.

Week 1: Register with HMRC for Corporation Tax

The first letter from HMRC to land on your doormat isn't the one you register with – it's the one that tells you your company exists in the tax system. A week or two after Companies House confirms your incorporation, HMRC sends your company's Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR) to your registered office. That UTR is the key to everything else you'll do with HMRC, and it's the first thing you'll need when you come to register for Corporation Tax.

You have three months from the date you start trading to register. The wording matters: 'trading' here isn't just 'taking on a paying client'. HMRC treats you as trading the moment you start buying or selling goods, advertising, renting premises, employing staff, or earning interest on deposits. If you're setting up email, ordering business cards, or placing your first Google Ad, the clock has begun.

You register at gov.uk/limited-company-formation. Have ready: your company's UTR, your Companies House registration number (the eight-digit number on your certificate of incorporation), the date you started trading, a five-digit SIC code that matches what your company actually does, and basic contact details. The form takes about fifteen minutes. HMRC confirms registration by post, not email, so allow a week or so for confirmation to reach you.

Miss the three-month deadline and HMRC will issue a late-filing penalty, even if no Corporation Tax is due. It's the sort of admin fine that's easy to avoid and annoyingly hard to argue down once issued.

Week 1: Open a business bank account

A separate business bank account isn't a legal requirement for every limited company, but treating it as optional is one of the fastest ways to erode the limited-liability protection you just paid to set up. Every time you run a personal expense through the company card, or pay a supplier from your own account, you blur the line between your money and the company's. Courts and HMRC both look at that blur when things go wrong.

Beyond the legal argument, there's a pragmatic one. At year end your accountant needs to reconcile every business transaction. If personal and business transactions share an account, that reconciliation gets expensive, and the chance of a missed expense climbs. A free business account pays for itself on accountancy fees alone in the first year.

Have these ready before you apply: your certificate of incorporation, photo ID for every director and person with significant control (PSC), proof of your own address, a rough forecast of first-year turnover, and a brief description of what the company does. A bank that's happy with UK-resident directors doing something boring (consulting, software, e-commerce) will usually approve inside a day. Anything more interesting – crypto-adjacent, high cash turnover, non-UK-resident directors – takes longer.

It's worth knowing the three rough categories before you pick. High-street banks like NatWest, Lloyds and Barclays are slow to onboard (expect weeks, not days), sometimes free for an introductory period then a fee, and give you the traditional tools you'd expect: cheque books, counter service and business credit facilities. Challenger banks like Starling, Tide and Monzo Business are app-first, typically free on the entry tier, open in minutes to hours, and pleasant to use day to day but without branches if that matters to you. Specialist business banks sit in between, often charging a modest monthly fee in exchange for dedicated relationship managers once you're turning over serious money.

The most common friction point for new directors is sector restrictions. Several challenger banks won't onboard non-UK-resident directors, and some decline particular SIC codes outright. If you don't tick the boring boxes, check the bank's onboarding policy before you waste a week applying.

Week 2: Decide how you'll pay yourself

The standard answer for owner-directors of a profitable UK limited company is a mix of a small salary and dividends. The current personal allowance and the primary NI threshold are both £12,570, and the employer's NI secondary threshold is £5,000. What that means in practice depends on whether your company can claim the Employment Allowance.

If you're a sole director with no other employees, you can't claim the Employment Allowance, and paying yourself £12,570 in salary triggers around £1,136 of employer's NI. Most one-person companies still do it because the corporation-tax saving on the salary outweighs the NI cost, but it's a genuine choice rather than a foregone conclusion. If your company has multiple directors or employees and qualifies for the Employment Allowance (currently £10,500 for 2026/27), £12,570 is the clean optimum because the allowance wipes out the employer's NI entirely. Either way, the usual strategy is to pay yourself a small salary up to the personal allowance and take the rest as dividends, which are taxed at lower rates than salary and don't attract National Insurance at all.

If you're taking any salary, you must register the company as an employer with HMRC before the first payday. That creates a PAYE scheme and an Employer Reference. Even at a minimal salary you'll be submitting Real Time Information (RTI) reports to HMRC every pay period, so you need payroll software (or an accountant) from day one.

Dividends look simple but have rules that catch people out. They can only be paid from post-tax distributable profits, not from whatever's sitting in the bank. That means you must work out your Corporation Tax liability first and leave it behind. For each dividend you pay, you need a dividend voucher (stating company name, date, amount, director receiving it) and board minutes recording the decision. It's admin, but it's also the paperwork HMRC will ask to see if they ever look twice.

The tax year runs to 5 April. Dividends are taxed in the year you receive them, so the timing of a December dividend versus an April dividend can shift which year's personal allowance and tax bands apply. A good rule of thumb: plan dividend timing annually, not ad-hoc.

One last piece of terminology. If you ran a sole trader business before incorporating, you'll be used to 'drawings'. There's no such thing in a limited company. Directors take salary, dividends, reimbursed expenses, or an interest-free director's loan (carefully). Anything else you pull out is likely being miscategorised.

Week 2: Set up accounting software and receipt capture

The correct time to set up accounting software is before your first transaction, not at year end. Backfilling nine months of bank feed into a fresh Xero account is possible but joyless, and it's where most new directors meet their first unexpected accountancy bill.

There are three categories worth knowing about. Full cloud accounting platforms – Xero, QuickBooks Online, and FreeAgent are the three most commonly used in the UK – handle the books, VAT, bank feeds, and payroll. Xero and QuickBooks work for most businesses; FreeAgent is included free with some business bank accounts (NatWest-owned brands, for example) and is well-suited to contractors and sole directors.

Receipt capture tools sit alongside the accounting platform and solve the 'I've got a pocket full of crumpled receipts' problem. Dext and AutoEntry photograph a receipt, run OCR over it, and publish a clean transaction into your accounting platform. Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent all have basic versions of this built in; the standalone tools are better if you have more than a handful of receipts a week.

If you're not trading yet – say, you've incorporated but you're still building the product – a lightweight tracker is all you need. A spreadsheet and a labelled folder of scanned receipts will get you through pre-trading expenses. Upgrade to full accounting software the month before you invoice your first customer.

One non-negotiable: if you'll register for VAT, your accounting software must be Making Tax Digital (MTD) compatible. All three platforms mentioned are, but the free tiers of some receipt-capture tools are not. Check before you commit.

FasCash sits alongside your accounting software rather than replacing it. It takes the transactions your accounting platform already has and turns them into a runway forecast, a VAT threshold alert, and a cashflow view that doesn't require a Chartered Accountant to interpret. Most new directors don't realise how close they're getting to the VAT registration threshold until they're already over it – that's the specific problem it's designed to avoid.

Week 3: Understand VAT – do you need to register now or later?

VAT registration is compulsory once your VAT-taxable turnover in the last 12 months goes over the registration threshold, which has been £90,000 since April 2024 and is reviewed annually. The 12-month window is rolling, not calendar: at the end of every month you look back at the previous 12 and check. Cross the line and you have 30 days to register; HMRC dates your registration from the first of the month after you crossed.

Plenty of founders stay below the threshold deliberately, especially if they sell to consumers. VAT adds 20% to your prices for a customer who can't reclaim it, which is a material competitive disadvantage if you're in a price-sensitive market. If you sell to consumers and you're near the threshold, modelling the jump carefully is worth a morning.

Voluntary registration makes sense in a few specific situations. If your customers are other VAT-registered businesses, the 20% you add is reclaimed by them and ignored, so charging VAT is cost-neutral to your customer while letting you reclaim VAT on your own costs. If you import goods or buy a lot of VAT-rated services (software subscriptions, advertising, professional fees), the input VAT you reclaim can be material. And once registered, your invoices look grown-up, which matters for some procurement teams.

The practical gotcha: once you've registered, you have to charge VAT on every taxable sale, file quarterly returns, and stay on the register until your turnover drops below the deregistration threshold for twelve months. Voluntary registration is easy to do and slow to undo.

A dedicated VAT registration walkthrough is on the way – if you're close to the threshold or thinking about registering voluntarily, it's worth a careful read before you do either.

Week 3: Sort your business insurance

Insurance is the admin item most directors skip for the longest, and the one that turns a small incident into a company-ending event when they get it wrong. Four types of cover are worth thinking about explicitly.

Employers' Liability is mandatory the moment you have an employee, and 'employee' is broader than you might think – it includes most apprentices and some interns. The law requires at least £5 million of cover, and most policies start at £10 million because the premium difference is negligible. If you're a sole director with no employees, you don't need EL, but you do need to keep good records of that fact because HMRC and the Health and Safety Executive occasionally check.

Professional Indemnity covers you against claims that your advice or work caused a client a loss. It's contractually required by most B2B consulting, agency, and software engagements – check your master services agreement template if you're not sure. Cover limits are usually set by the biggest client contract you expect to sign in the year. Professional Indemnity is not a 'nice to have' if you're providing expert advice; a single claim you can't pay can wind up the company.

Public Liability covers injury or damage to third parties or their property. If you meet clients at their premises, host clients at yours, or exhibit at events, you want it. Most policies pair it with Employers' Liability as a bundle.

Cyber insurance has moved from optional to expected. Larger clients now routinely ask for evidence of cyber cover as part of vendor onboarding, and your policy will typically cover incident response costs, data breach notifications, business interruption, and ransomware extortion up to the limit.

Some trades carry mandatory sector-specific requirements on top – anyone regulated by the FCA, solicitors via the SRA, private hire drivers, security professionals, and others. Check your trade association or regulator before you assume public, professional indemnity and employers' liability cover you.

Week 4: Register for Self Assessment as a director

HMRC no longer requires directors to file a personal Self Assessment return simply because they're directors. You must file if you receive any income beyond PAYE wages – most commonly dividends drawn from your own company – or if you meet any of the other standard Self Assessment triggers (foreign income, capital gains, high earnings, rental income, and so on). If your only income is a PAYE salary taxed fully at source, you may not need to file at all. In practice, most owner-directors of a UK limited company do need to file, because dividends are paid gross and have to be declared on a personal return. If you're unsure, HMRC's 'Check if you need to send a Self Assessment tax return' tool on gov.uk walks you through the current rules in a few minutes.

If Self Assessment is new to you, the registration form is an SA1 on gov.uk. Register by 5 October after the tax year in which you need to file – so if you start taking dividends in the 2025/26 tax year, the registration deadline is 5 October 2026. Leave it until January and HMRC can issue a penalty for late registration.

Once registered, your Self Assessment return covers the tax year to the previous 5 April, and is due online by the following 31 January – along with any tax owed. The paper filing deadline is 31 October, three months earlier, which is why almost everyone files online.

Self Assessment is separate from the company's own returns. Do not assume your accountant is filing your personal return unless you've specifically asked them to. Most engage on the company work by default and quote separately for the director's Self Assessment.

Your ongoing responsibilities as a director

Your company has a calendar of filings that starts running from the day it's incorporated. Miss them and the penalties are cheap and annoying at first, expensive and reputational later. The short version:

• Confirmation statement: due annually, submitted to Companies House, confirming the registered office, directors, PSCs, share capital and SIC codes are up to date. Since the Companies House fee rise on 1 February 2026 the filing fee is £50 online, or £110 if you file on paper. It takes about ten minutes if nothing has changed.
• Annual accounts: your first set of statutory accounts is due 21 months after the date of incorporation, then annually nine months after each subsequent year end. For most micro-entities, filing abbreviated accounts at Companies House and full accounts with HMRC is standard.
• Corporation Tax return (CT600): due 12 months after the company's year end. The Corporation Tax payment itself is due earlier – 9 months and 1 day after the year end – so the cash goes out before the return is filed.
• PAYE: monthly RTI submissions on or before each payday, even if only the director is on payroll. Missing RTI submissions attracts penalties from the first late filing.
• VAT returns: quarterly if you're registered, filed through MTD-compatible software. The payment deadline is a month and seven days after the end of the VAT quarter.
• PSC register: keep the Persons with Significant Control register up to date whenever shareholdings change. The confirmation statement checks it, but the underlying register itself must be maintained continuously.

Sitting behind all of this are the general duties of a director under the Companies Act 2006. The full list runs to seven duties, but three are worth internalising from day one: the duty to act within your powers (stick to what the articles of association allow), the duty to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members, and the duty to avoid conflicts of interest. Breach of the Act isn't just paperwork – it can leave directors personally liable.

Common mistakes new directors make

Most of the problems I see in the first year come from a short list of easy-to-make mistakes. Knowing them in advance is most of the battle.

Mixing personal and business spending. Every quarter or two a founder will run a £400 supermarket trip through the company card 'because it's easier' and then try to untangle it at year end. The fix is boring but effective: one business card, one personal card, never the wrong one for the purpose.

Paying yourself dividends from money you don't actually own. The cash in the business account is a poor proxy for distributable profits. A chunk of it is owed in Corporation Tax, some of it is VAT held on behalf of HMRC, and some of it is trade payables you haven't paid yet. Directors who ignore this end up with unlawful dividends that technically must be repaid and, worse, personal tax they didn't plan for.

Missing the Self Assessment registration. Because the company's own tax returns run through the accountant, new directors assume their personal return is handled too. It usually isn't. Every year, a crop of directors discover in late January that they should have registered in October.

Not keeping dividend vouchers and board minutes. The paperwork takes two minutes per dividend and looks pedantic until HMRC asks. Do it every time, store it in the company folder, and it becomes forgettable admin.

Treating Companies House filings as optional. The Companies House confirmation statement is a ten-minute job once a year, but missing it triggers an escalating sequence: reminder, penalty, a letter threatening to strike the company off, and eventually dissolution. I've seen otherwise solvent companies dissolved because the registered email address was stale and nobody saw the reminders.

Trying to fix too much yourself. The first year is the most expensive time to discover that the 'free' approach has accumulated three small problems that now require an accountant to unpick. A single session with a qualified accountant in month two or three pays back many times over across year one.

Frequently asked questions

The questions I'm asked most often by new directors, answered plainly.